Ao Dai performance sparkles in Hue Festival

June 13, 2006

Models in ao dai designed by Minh Hanh.

It's not difficult for a visitor to Hue these days to see a traditional Vietnamese ao dai. However, the hundreds of ao dai designs featured in a glamorous performance at Hue Festival 2006 on the nigh of June 8 intrigued visitors.

Ao dai designed by Thuong Huyen.

The innovative ao dai with subtly different designs and glamorous colours were worn by beautiful fashion models from Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and Hue on the poetic Huong River under the glittering lights of a firework-lit night.

Entitled Colour of the Time, the performance featured works from 10 prominent Vietnamese designers. The 300 designs were inspired by the central city's antique charm, picturesque landscapes, and the images of birds, plants and flowers. The collections included: Thu Giang's Phoenix collection, Anh Vu's Patterns from the Royal Palace, Xuan Thu's Dragon and Cloud, Cong Khanh's Patterns on Pottery-Porcelain, and Minh Hanh's Hue Citadel Gates. All showed innovation in the Vietnamese designers' use of paint, embroidery and other special embellishments. And each collection was woven on high-tech Toan Thinh silk.

Ao dai designed by Xuan Thu.

Accompanied by the music of Trinh Cong Son, the performance started impressively when each designer sat with 25 fashion models on the same sampan floating along the river to greet the spectators. Surrounding each sampan were 10 little boats, which created a special stage for the performance. On land, 50 girls in traditional ao dai drove their bicycles leisurely along Trang Tien Bridge as the glittering fireworks performance was launched by French artist Pierre Alain Hubert.

Fireworks by Pierre Alain Hubert concludes ao dai performance.

According to designer Minh Hanh, the general director of the performance, the sampan on the Huong River and the Trang Tien vaporous bridge were two typical images of the city and that was why they were selected as the main "stages" for the event.

This was the second time an ao dai event of this magnitude was launched at the biannual Hue Festival, but what made this performance groundbreaking was the special stages and the combination of modern and traditional elements in each collection. As most of the designer were also artists, they viewed the ao dai as a sort of canvas for their art. (VNA)